Monday, June 23, 2014

Its quite cold outside this morning. There's no frost, but a very heavy dew and when daybreak comes I'll be keen to see if it looks like we might get some rain.

I sneaked out early and pinched some herbs and tomatoes from the last poor little bushes and now they're in a pot with last seasons dried beans and some garlic and celery - I'm hoping they make a lovely baked bean dish which is great with Paul's sourdough bread.

Sunday, June 22, 2014

(I pinched that from another blog I read today, which I thought was terrific.)

So we've just come back from a glorious few weeks in Europe (very hot summer coming up for them, I think! Sablet was like a little oven!) and winter has hit while we were gone and there's Things To Be Done in the garden, although the delicious Gardening Dave and our very kind neighbours looked after the place very well for us. This morning the garden was thick with frost which still hasn't quite burned off. The chickens appear to have gone significantly quiet egg-wise - two eggs a day since we arrived back, and Pauline said they were only laying three a day while we were gone, so one of them is shirking. I think it's the black one, because she's looking a bit headachy at the moment, so I'm going to treat them today to a rice-tuna-garlic thing with some cheese shredded in and see if that helps by infusing a little protein. I'll add some garlic, too, just for anti-everything properties.

The co-op is closed today, but tomorrow I'll hit them up for some tonic and new layer mush. For some reason these girls prefer their pellets as mush. I think they're spoiled, but what the heck.

The vegetable garden got eaten by something while we were gone - the caulis looked like they had been doing well, but there's only bits of the new heads left. The brussels sprouts, ditto - but this will happen when you leave a place for six weeks, and anyway we were planning to put new earth in for Spring. So that won't be a problem.

That's it for the moment. Just trying to remember to use this again as a way of keeping tabs on what works and what doesn't, what needs to be done, and when.